La Combattante (L19)

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La Combattante
La Combattante.jpg
Ship data
flag Free FranceFree France Free France
Ship type Escort destroyer
class Hunt class, type III
Shipyard Fairfield , Govan
Build number 695
Order July 28, 1940
Keel laying January 16, 1941
Launch April 27, 1942
as HMS Haldon
Commissioning December 30, 1942
Whereabouts Sunk on February 23, 1945 after being hit by a mine
Ship dimensions and crew
length
85.3 m ( Lüa )
80.5 m ( Lpp )
width 9.6 m
Draft Max. 3.73 m
displacement 1,087  ts ;
1,435 ts fully equipped
 
crew 168-185 men
Machine system
machine 2 boilers ,
2 Parsons turbines
Machine
performance 		19,000 PSw
Top
speed 		27 kn (50 km / h)
propeller 2
Armament

The La Combattante (L19) was a destroyer escort the British Hunt Class of type III , which for the British Royal Navy had been built. The ship was commissioned by the Free French Armed Forces in 1942 and used under British command.
The ship, which was used in the canal and later in the North Sea, was involved in several battles with German speedboats and sank S 141 on the night of May 13, 1944 , on which the son of Klaus of the commander of the Navy, Admiral Dönitz , fell. The La Combat aunt ran on February 23 in 1945 just before midnight north of the Humber -Mündung at 53 ° 22 '13 "  N , 1 ° 1' 40"  O coordinates: 53 ° 22 '13 "  N , 1 ° 1' 40"  O near the East Dudgeon lightship on a mine laid by German speedboats, broke into two parts, both of which sank in a short time. 68 of the 185 men on board died.

History of the ship

The ship was ordered as a destroyer escort on July 28, 1940 as part of the British war budget of 1940 at Fairfield in Govan along with another Type III ship of the Hunt class. These were the only orders for destroyer escorts of this class for the shipyard. The keel-laying of the 2nd order with construction number 695 took place on January 16, 1941 and an air raid on the shipyard on March 13, 1941 (so-called Clydebank Blitz) delayed the completion of the destroyer escort under construction. Hull number 695 was launched on April 27, 1942 as Haldon after the sister ship Goathland (L17) launched on February 3, 1943 . In 1942 the Royal Navy had difficulties manning its ships and therefore gave ships to the Allied navies. This procedure had already begun in May 1940 when the destroyer Garland was made available to the Polish Navy. As of May 1941, the British had provided the Free French naval forces with nine Flower class corvettes , which were taken over directly upon completion and two of which were lost in the North Atlantic in 1942. They also offered to take over Hunt destroyers in 1942, as they had since been taken over by the Poles, Norwegians and Greeks. In December 1942, the Free French naval forces took over the almost completed HMS Haldon as La Combattante , which, however, remained a single ship under the French flag, although the transfer of two more ships was initially considered. The ship was used in conjunction with British and Norwegian sister ships in the Canal and the North Sea.

Calls

About Scapa Flow and lighter operations in the Irish Sea moved the La Combattante to the British 1st Destroyer Flotilla in Portsmouth, in which it was used alongside other Hunt destroyers, including the Norwegian Eskdale and Glaisdale . on her first mission on March 23, 1943 to protect a convoy in the English Channel , she rescued the 68-strong crew of the Liberty ship Stell Traveler after a mine hit. The main task of the flotilla was to secure coastal convoys. The ships also frequently rescued aircraft crews after emergency landings in the canal.
On the night of April 20, 1944, the Hunt destroyers La Combattante and Middleton fended off an attack by the 5th and 9th S-boat flotilla with eleven boats on a convoy protected by them and pursued them. S 144 ran aground near Calais. On the night of April 26, 1944, La Combattante and the frigate HMS Rowley tracked down a group of German speedboats; the La Combattante succeeded in sinking S 147 and damaging another boat. On the night of May 13, the 5th and 9th S-Flotilla tried again with ten boats to attack a coastal convoy near Selsey Bill. Detected early by radar, the frigate Stayner , the corvette Gentian , four MTBs and the La Combattante provided the approaching speedboats. The French ship sank S 141 , on which naval assistant doctor Klaus Dönitz, the older son of the commander of the Navy, Grand Admiral Dönitz , fell. Two other boats, S 100 and S 142 , were damaged.
On May 28, La Combattante sank another radar contact; However, it was the British MTB 732 , which returned with the MTB 739 from a special mission that was not reported.

When landing in Normandy, the La Combattante of "Force E" was assigned to the Canadian troops with two British cruisers, five British and two Canadian naval destroyers and four Hunt destroyers in the Juno landing area. On the approach from the Solent, she secured the attack convoy J 9 of ten armored landing craft with HMS Stevenstone (L16) , Venus (R50) through a cleared access road. She remained in the landing area to provide artillery and air defense support. On June 13, 1944, General de Gaulle returned briefly to France for the first time on the La Combattante . He used the short troop visit planned by the Allied side in the invasion area to visit the first liberated French city ( Bayeux ), where he gave a speech on June 14, 1944, referred to the legality of his government in exile and allied plans for a military government (Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories) and an Allied currency and set up a French administration under François Coulet. Then de Gaulle returned to Great Britain on the La Combattante .

On the night of 8 July, speedboats from Le Havre attacked the security destroyers in the landing area off Normandy, including La Combattante , without causing significant damage.

On the night of August 26, 1944, La Combattante was one of the Allied units that attacked the 8th Artillery Carrier Flotilla near Fécamp and sank four artillery carriers and seriously damaged others. On the 28th, she was one of the units that again put the 14th clearing boat flotilla in front of Fécamp after a mine-laying mission, sank a submarine, but only damaged one of the seven clearing boats.

The end of La Combattante

On February 23, 1945, the La Combattante was conducting a surveillance voyage on the inside of the Outer Dowsing Shoal in a cleared shipping lane when it ran into a mine at about 11:45 p.m. at the level of the East Dudgeon lightship off Cromer and immediately broke it in two broke. The front part immediately sank to position 53º22'N, 01º01'E. The rear part drifted in the current for a short time before it also sank at position 53º20'52 "N, 01º01'33" E. 68 men of the 185 on board lost their lives, including two men from the Royal Navy. 117 men were rescued by the British motor torpedo boats MTB 763 and MTB 770 .
The La Combattante was one of the 24 ground mines that was destroyed by the German 2nd Schnellboot Flotilla on the night of 29./30. January 1945 had been laid on the access roads to the Humber.

Mostly the sinking of the La Combattante was attributed to the German micro-submarine U 5330 of the seal type under Lieutenant Sparbrodt. However, the corvette reported by Sparbrodt as sunk off the coast of Kent was probably the British cable layer Alert (941 GRT).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the naval war. P. 442.
  2. ^ Rohwer, p. 447
  3. ↑ On June 3, 1944, the Committee for National Liberation (Comité français de la Liberation nationale, CFLN for short ) was renamed the “Gouvernement provisoire de la République Française” (GPRF)
  4. ^ Rohwer, p. 442
  5. ^ Rohwer, p. 471

literature

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